


On Loving a Prophet

by alphahelices



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-24
Updated: 2018-07-30
Packaged: 2019-06-15 10:52:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,218
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15411333
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alphahelices/pseuds/alphahelices
Summary: The green flares fade on the walls and he hears her breath hitch and steady again. Then she whispers, in a voice that aches, "I don’t want you to see." And he is sure then that she knows, too, that Corypheus was not the end.





	1. Chapter 1

                The night after he kisses her for the first time, he dreams of floods.

                She was sweet and soft like the earth after summer rain, but he feels the dry soil moving beneath him and he knows he is going to be swept away. He dreams of snapped bones and broken tree branches and muddy churning water, but when he wakes, Cullen can only think of the taste of Lavellan’s mouth.

                He’s heard them calling her _herald_. He’s read the sacred texts and he knows what happens to prophets, but no one warned him of the sweetness that comes before the bitter end. He prays to Andraste and he convinces himself, weakly, that maybe elven prophets are different, that maybe she will not succumb to flame or sword or angry mob.

                And when she smiles at him, it’s so easy to forget.

 

                There are holes in the sky, gaping vivid green. She heals them with one hand. A man, a demon, a creature who would make himself a god appears, and she challenges him. She is so small, this unexpected elf from a forgotten corner of some ancient forest, and yet she is _rising_.

                They meet at the war table and she plots military maneuvers and diplomatic displays. They meet in the gardens and she digs in the dirt with her hands like a child, sings songs to her growing plants, and laughs too loud at even the weakest of his jokes. They kiss in secret corners of the hold and she smiles wider than anything as she walks away after, leaving him with swollen lips and a thumping heart.

                He finds her on the empty parapets late at night, cold but not shivering. She is watching the moon, her arms wrapped around her narrow chest, and for the first time he notices the peaks of her collarbone under her skin. He comes to her, on the cold stone wall, and asks her if she is okay. She nods once, and puts on a tiny smile, trying to reassure him. A moment passes and he reaches out to her, pulling her back against his chest. He rubs warmth into her upper arms and presses a kiss to the crown of her head, and then he waits.

                Her voice is fainter than he’s ever heard it when she finally asks, _do you think I’m making the right choices?_

                He presses another kiss to her hair and pulls her closer, wrapping his arms around her. He looks at the moon and sighs and says only, _yes._

                Wordlessly, she begins to cry, from doubt and fear and frustration. Her shoulders start to shake just a little and still she stares into the heavens.  He holds her in silence and tells himself, _this is what it is to love a prophet_.

 

                She soothes the lyrium aches with elven potions and gentle touches. The pressure eases from his skull like receding waves and he thanks her, jokingly, for her mercy. She laughs and reaches up to smooth down his hair. Absentmindedly he runs a hand through his hair and tangles it again, and doesn’t realize it until he sees her pout.

                Once, to tease her, he calls her the Herald of Andraste. She doesn’t laugh, just flatly says _I hate that name_. He doesn’t do it again. At night, alone, he wonders if she also pictures Andraste’s flames and a prophet’s martyrdom. He wonders if she thinks about how this will end, too. And then he falls asleep, the headaches gone from her healing touch.

                _Just herbs,_ she’d said, mixing potions. _Nothing heaven sent._ And he had wondered if she was reassuring herself.

 

                In retrospect, he decides, he probably waited too long to take her to bed.

                He thinks of the end, and knows he will wish for one more time with her skin flush against his. It has never been like this before. She is wild and loving and _his_. He feels like he could drown in her.

                When her hot mouth is on his skin, he can almost forget the tumult in the world around them. Perched above him, she rests her forehead against his while she slides him slowly into her. He reaches for her waist just to have something solid to hold onto. With a soft gasp, she presses a hand to the plane of his chest, and they begin to move together.

                Her mark flares, igniting the dim room with green light, and he remembers what she is and how this will end.

                He pushes himself deeper inside her, crying out her name like a prayer— _Oh Lavellan—_ and he wants her there forever, wants to be here with her until the rift tears the sky in two. _When the end comes_ , he thinks, as she moans above him, _so will we_.

 

                She is leaving at daybreak for Haven, to bring down Corypheus. He tells himself, _she’s survived everything else so far_ , but it is a weak hope and he knows it.

                He stays in her quarters that night, but can’t bring himself to speak as they lie in the darkness. He holds her like something slipping away, his fingers splayed over her heart. It beats steadily beneath his sweating palm. She falls asleep and her breathing deepens, and he curls tight against her.

                He cries then, while she sleeps, and he prays to all the gods and powers he believed in before the lyrium. Still her heart beats slowly beneath his open hand, and he prays along in time, _oh please, oh please, oh please. Just one more night with her._


	2. Chapter 2

                Together with Leliana and Josephine, he stands on the parapets of Skyhold. A storm is coming, and the wind rips and roils around them. In the distance, thunder rumbles, breaking their stoic silence. The rift over Haven is barely visible on the horizon. They watch it, waiting for something to change, for some kind of sign as to how the battle ends.

                The rain starts, heavy and warm. The sky is falling apart, pouring itself out in the mountains, and still the rift is unchanged. The three are soaked in seconds, but still they don’t speak, just press a little closer together. Josephine hums the smallest noise of displeasure and Leliana, hopelessly, raises her hands to her face in an attempt to shield her eyes from the downpour.

                A flash of lightning strikes close enough to make them startle. The thunder rolls, and in the distance, the rift flickers—

                flares bright for a moment—

                _like Lavellan’s hand in the night_ —

                and then knits, heals, and is gone.

                Leliana and Josephine are shouting, wordless paroxysms, but Cullen is silent. He searches for the part of his heart where Lavellan is, and wonders how it would feel if she were dead. How it would feel if she were alive.

                He thinks, _you knew all along how this would end_ , and he walks back into the hold and out of the storm.

 

                The lyrium and the ale in his chambers are untouched, but still he is in a stupor when the scouts come rushing in and tell him a party is coming up the mountain path. He does not move until Leliana fetches him and drags him clumsily to the parapets to watch the approaching figures.

                They are too far to tell how many return. He closes his eyes. There are no prayers left to whisper and nothing left to hope for, and he can’t bear to watch how the murky figures in the distance resolve themselves into the shape of everyone but Lavellan. His heart beats so loud and fast in his ears, the world around him sounds distant and muted.

                And then Leliana is shouting joyfully, _they all made it_ , and he opens his eyes and sees Lavellan walking up the path, below, whole and uninjured and real.

                He doesn’t cry out or celebrate or even speak, just walks slow and numb to the gates of the hold. His heartbeat doesn’t slow until she walks through the gates and he steps close and pulls her into his arms. And then he breathes out, all the breaths he’s been holding for days, and the words _thank the Maker_ fall out of his mouth in a choked sob.

 

                They fall asleep together in her quarters the night after her return. When his head hits the pillow, he imagines nothing could wake him for hours or days or weeks. He drifts off with an arm draped loosely over her waist, feeling the rise and fall of her breathing, like waves lapping on a distant shore.

                He wakes with a start in the night to find her sitting up in bed and clutching her arm. The room is lit sickly green and her mark crackles and flares as she cries out in pain. He is on his feet in an instant, trying to help, offering to run for healers or potions or herbs. The light dims, and the pain recedes enough for her to catch her breath, and all she asks of him is _please don’t look._

                He knows he can’t argue with her. Slowly, he sits heavily on the edge of the bed, staring away from her. He watches the green light flicker across the walls, brighter and then dimmer and then brighter again. The green flares fade on the walls and he hears her breath hitch and steady again, then she whispers, in a voice that aches, _I don’t want you to see._ And he is sure then that she knows, too, that Corypheus was not the end.

 

                The days turn into months and the months into years and Cullen starts to convince himself that things will be okay. No one calls her the herald anymore. The last of the rifts heal one by one. _It’s over now_ , he tells himself, and he almost believes it. And then her mark flares in the night again, violent and bright. He reaches out to rub her back, and between gritted teeth she hisses, _please don’t look._

                He recoils. The green light dances across the ceiling. She whispers, more kindly now, _you can’t fix this_. She means it to be reassuring, but when he falls asleep, he dreams again of angry mobs, of Andraste’s flame, of bitter martyrdom. Each dreamscape is flooded with harsh green light.

 

                She only grows thinner with time. Her mark wakes her more and more in the night. Her eyes grow a little more wild, sink a little deeper in her face. He thinks of the sculptures of Andraste in the chantry and wonders how she really looked, toward the end. _The maker takes so much._ He wonders how much more of her there is to lose.

                And then they are at Halamshiral and the Qunari are stirring something up behind the eluvians and her mark is flaring every night now, sometimes two or three times. He wakes to her screaming and, forgetting himself, he looks. Her eyes catch his and they are wide and afraid and _knowing_.

                She drifts into an uneasy sleep and he holds her again, like the night before Corypheus, and listens to her heartbeat. He wonders how many more beats there are to hear, wonders with an ache how much more the maker will force her to suffer. He remembers her singing in the gardens in the old days, kissing him heavy and warm like fat raindrops.

                Her skin is thin and cold under his fingertips. He is too angry with the maker to pray tonight, while she sleeps. Instead he finds himself staring at the dark walls and waiting for the next flash of green light.

 

                She wakes with a five fingered bruise on her breast where he gripped her too tightly in sleep. His mouth spills apologies, _Lavellan, I’m so sorry_. She stares at him, unseeing, like a sleepwalker.  She presses her own fingertips against the purple outlines on her skin, and then she says _let’s get on with it_ , and starts to pull on her armor.

 

                They pull her from the eluvian the next day, bloodied and maimed and unconscious, and he wonders vaguely if this is the moment that will be immortalized in sculptures and texts for ages. The air is dry this time, no storms, no floods. The stone beneath his feet is solid and unmoving. The healers come, and when he tries to watch them work, they shoo him away and titter, _don’t look_.

                She wakes, hours later, and greets him with a bandaged elbow and no forearm beneath it. She strokes his cheek and whispers his name, gentle like morning dew, and then she drifts to sleep.

                She sleeps all night, uninterrupted. The room stays dark until morning. He watches her sleep, and in the morning he fetches her breakfast, and she eats. One-handed.

                Around mid-morning, he gives in to exhaustion and crawls into bed beside her. He can hold her tighter, he muses groggily, without her arm between them. In his mind, he prays to the maker, _let this be the end of it._

                In the bleariness before sleep sets in, he wonders if the maker is going to take her, piece by piece. He thinks, defiantly, _I will love her until there is nothing left. I will love her until she is only ash._


End file.
